Several handset manufacturers have already started marketing eco-friendly mobile phones, but a new survey’s discovered that only a small minority of Brits are actually sold on so-called eco phones.
Opinium Research – on behalf of website Moneysupermarket – quizzed 2088 UK adults earlier this year and discovered that a whopping …

“bio-plastic” sucks

My only experience of “bio-plastic” is the potato tent pegs issued at Glastonbury last year. They were TOTAL CRAP. If you managed to get one in the ground without it snapping, the top would snap off as soon as there was a little gust of wind.

So I will not buy a phone made out of “bio-plastic” until it is well proven to be durable.

Yes indeed...

Nokia's online store tried to jump on that particular bandwagon by sellng the black N79 for exactly the same price as the white, and grey, but without a charger. "Be kind to the environment and use your existing one!" - and they'll donate £5 to charity. Never mind that the missing charger costs £15. So why not donate £15 to charity? In fact why not buy the handset for £40 less elsewhere and donate the money saved to the same charity that would only have received a paltry £5 if you'd bought from Nokia?

Because most mobile manufacturers see the eco-bandwagon as a smokescreen through which to rip people off, perhaps?

Eco, yeah whatever..

Well, we have grown cynical about all this "Green" stuff.

It just seems another marketing ploy to get us to buy more of their stuff.

Well how about the first problem is that if we ditch all our current "Environment destroying" phones to buy a new Eco one we are helping no one because someone has to then deal with all the waste from our old phones we just dumped.

Better to hold onto the old phone for now. Then wait until *All* phones are good to our planet.

Title should be 'marketing stopped working'

We don't see the reason why an 'Eco' Handset should cost more than a normal one that does exactly the same thing, and are sick to death of marketing people telling us that the latest buzzword is so great we have to pay more for it.

The thing is made out of plastic and metal. It aint rice paper... it's going to stick around for a long time once it's dumped. Exactly the same is true for the 'Eco' ones.

Solar handset

Samsung and LG showed fairly reasonable solar panel equipped handsets - that would be useful as it could trickle charge constantly during the day - solving one of the two issues here, battery life.

It is sad people today are not as ethical or concerned as in the 70s and 80s. Back then, shows like Blue Peter encouraged charity and creativity, while today, it is self promotion, celebs and victim mentality. I know this is not the forum for such sentiments, but every day spent in the UK gets more depressing. Sadly, I'm probably alone on this so expect to be flamed.

RE: “bio-plastic” sucks

We have "Compostable flatware" were I work, and the things are crap, the forks will bend if you look at them funny, the spoons will do this sort of Salvador Dali thing when put in close proximity to soup, and the knives are so dull that by the time you get through your food it has decomposed already, regular old vodka will burn right through the cups.

So other than the case, there is nothing they can make 'eco-friendly', the most they could do is use inferior lead-free components and solder.

WEEE

NOC's.....

The devices are themselves only the tip of what is an enormous iceberg.

I work for a 'telecoms supplier' and spend a lot of time in server rooms. These things chew through power like water over the edge of Niagara.

The 'typical' purple clad server is geared up to run at between 500 and 1000 watts, depending on the Config.

Two or three of these in one cabinet, plus the drives, plus the back ups, plus the air con' units, plus the……

Assume 50 cabinets per NOC [a round if conservative figure] all running 24 hours and one plus, in a small bungalow in Weston Super Mere powering a small Finnish mobile is, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant.

What is really needed is some sort of joined up way of producing the power in the first place, using all the different 'green' technologies -wind, hydro, solar et al-, having people generate some / most / of their domestic needs through their own green generation -again, solar, wind etc- thereby encouraging users to 'value' the power they consumer by understanding more about how it is made.

There also needs to be a drive the Government UK to force Britain PLC to start actually making some of this green technology, not just importing German windmills and Swiss turbines…...